Nutrition. (And why you should care about it)

Back in 2011 when I had started training myself, a lot of people used to criticize my way of living and enthusiasm in sports. They assumed my training and diet was a waste of time, that we’d rather enjoy life without restraining ourselves. What’s the point with eating healthy? « All men must die » (valar morghulis bruh) after all. Meh.

Sup mate! Vincent here.

By now we’re living in a world that doesn’t really often allow people to rest and question themselves regarding their condition and/or daily habits. Everything goes extremely fast and we’re more and more used to believe that hardships are just the results of bad luck and we tend to avoid looking for bounds, causes and effects. Thereby we always have to deal with a huge amount of bullshit and in this post i’m gonna point out one fancy little hog that has been responsible for quite a bias regarding health, which is the idea of morphotypes.

Morphotype is a whimsy terminology used to describe your body type. From my PoV and experience, according to some people it suggests that you should accept yourself the way you are at this very moment. Forever.

Can you relate, Ser Gregor Clegane? (wow too much references to GoT already)

I’m too skinny / fat / this is unfair.

Is it really unfair? Is that even true? Does this really define yourself?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m OK with the fact there are actual metabolisms, some slowers than others. But just because some people can gain weight more easily doesn’t mean skinny guys does not suffer from bad symptoms from the inside as well. Their body just doesn’t store fat as much as their antagonists and there’s something interesting about it. If you move your perspective, you can clearly see that this way: their body never send alert signals. Like you never know when it’s time to pay attention but deep inside you may still be doing it wrong. You can take 10 lbs of fat for every slice of pizza VS you friend may never but in the end you guys ate the same thing, didn’t you?

In the Book of Five Rings from Miyamoto Musashi (some old Samurai ressources), it is said that at that time – don’t ask me which time, I haven’t got a clue – perfection and self accomplishment were not limited to only one discipline. Indeed, the notion of fulfilment consists in a constant learning, freed from discrimination, of any possible field/domain you can bump into. The way of the Samurai implies that in addition to this badass spiritual aspect of your life, martial trainings and sword mastery, you may want to attach as much importance to arts, cultures, politics, medicines or any form of expression which, from a global perspective, constitutes life.

Lemme try to transpose this to nowadays’ context. I’d say that if you want to keep aiming for a better version of yourself, acquiring some knowledge about diet (and I should probably say nutrition instead of diet) is also something to include in your ‘operating mode’. We have yet to understand that a large quantity of our daily meals are sharply bad for us, unhealthy as hell, full of sugar and saturated fat, persistently lacking more and more essential nutriments and vitamins due to awful agriculture decisions and even stock markets playing some frightful role in the deterioration of soil fertility. We may want to help our body and immune system if we want to maximize our life expectancy and by that I mean eating clean most of the time. This usually entails the emergency to understand some basics such as daily nutritional requirements VS caloric expenditure… and maybe also practicing physical activities every week.

Plus, if you get a lifestyle that is one of health, your mental and physical state will be one of sheer awesomeness ! I can ensure you that when your body is healthy, your brain usually follow. That is because when you run your body on clean fuel and give it regular use, it runs efficiently and becomes a cheerful system as a whole. Again, from my PoV and feelings, I’ve been never this productive / running with clear mind before I started eating clean.

So yeah, I can’t agree with this statement of « accepting your body », even if sometimes for some particular cases one may have to do it occasionally for example if something irreversible happen(ed)s to you or that you’re born with. But other than that, indeed, your body is not an immutable condition. « You are what you eat », yes, this is the result of a one time period showcasing your efforts and/or weaknesses. I believe in everyone, we can truly become better versions of ourselves.

PS: I’m too tired right now to explain why sex is even better with healthy/in-shape people but yeah, trust me. It is.

PS2 (no copyright infringement intended bruh): there’s something huge related to eating clean which is the days you’re allowed not to eat clean. Saturday cheat-meal dude. This little ‘derequisition’ of bad foods lasting all along the week makes you reconsider the taste of unhealthy – but so freaking toothsome – meals full of carbohydrates. Yeah because well fuck that, I couldn’t give up on burgs. Broccolis are cool but burgs and tacos are cooler. No offense brocs.